Mobile phones are a huge success story of the past two decades – and the devices get more powerful each year. Unfortunately, creating applications that run on all phones is virtually impossible – but many businesses achieve significant benefits by using mobile technology – particularly in applications such as point-of-delivery confirmation.

This page provides a background on the current mobile technologies available. For a detailed analysis see: Software Development For The Mobile Market. The analysis is also available as a PDF White Paper.

The fundamental problem with delivering business applications over mobile phones is the huge number of devices, and the wide variety of features on these devices. It is simply impossible to develop a single program that works with all mobiles.

In general, there are five approaches to delivering business solutions over mobiles:

In Autumn 2008 T-Mobile announced the first mobile based on Google’s Android mobile operating system. Google’s entry into this market has caused huge excitement amongst geeks, but at the user level it has been largely overshadowed by the success of the iPhone.

Google’s approach is the opposite of Microsoft and Apple – both of whom retain significant control over their mobile phone operating systems. Google’s idea is to make a new phone operating system which is open and free. Their hope is that this will encourage innovative development of both phones and applications. Google is investing in Android because it expects that web searches will increasingly happen on mobiles, and it wants to be able to advertise to mobile users.

As of 2008, Android is too new to be considered as a platform for commercial business applications. However, if phone manufacturers do adopt it for new products, there may soon be a market for end-user or business applications.

The Apple iPhone was one of the biggest technology stories in 2008. With the arrival of the 3G iPhone, Apple also started to target business users, with features such as Exchange integration.

With a huge screen, and the innovative multi-touch feature, the iPhone might be an attractive platform for commercial applications – for example, it might be useful for viewing cad plans on building sites.

However, there are some serious obstacles at present:

• Apple does not permit users to directly install applications onto the iPhone – all applications must be bought from the Apple Store, and Apple takes a 30% cut. There may be some way around this in the future, but at present we are not aware of it.
• For true commercial applications, the Apple may be too fragile, and it is certainly far too desirable – thefts would be a huge problem.
• Battery life of current iPhone products is too low.

Of course, these obstacles apply mostly to commercial / industrial applications. They are not particularly a problem in terms of creating end-user applications. Blueberry has the C++ skills necessary to develop iPhone programs, and we would be very interested in discussing this with customers.

Windows Mobile is the name given by Microsoft to their operating system for Mobile Phones and PDA. Windows Mobile has a number of previous names, including Windows CE.

Microsoft had hoped that one of the major phone manufacturers – e.g. Nokia or Sony Ericsson – would adopt Windows Mobile, but this has not happened in any significant way. Instead, a Taiwanese manufacturer (HTC) was contracted to produce reference designs, and these have been sold by operators like Orange in many countries. Windows Mobile is also very popular with the second-tier mobile phone manufacturers – companies who cannot afford to create their own OS.

At the same time, Windows Mobile has also been adopted strongly by manufacturers of industrial PDAs and mobiles – products designed for commercial rather than consumer use. The leading manufacturer of such products is Symbol Technologies – who were bought out by Motorola in 2008. This link shows their product range: http://www.motorola.com/Business/US-EN/Business Product and Services/Mobile Computers/Handheld Computers

From a development perspective, Windows Mobile has very strong advantages. Microsoft has provided a rich platform of development tools – including the C# language, which is much easier to use than C used on other mobiles. Microsoft also includes tools for communication between software on the phone and central servers, and they even include a small database engine.

The strong development tools and wide availability of different devices make Windows Mobile a particularly strong platform for delivering business applications.

Blueberry has strong skills in Windows Mobile Development, and has completed a number of projects on this platform. With our skills in web and client-server development, we can design a complete system that integrates field staff and office workers.